Demitri was woken up by His Best Friend In The Whole World - Tomo.  He loved his kitten.  He was glad when he didn't have to go to school and could play with Tomo all day.

He quickly got dressed.  He never got new clothes.  His mother tried to say it was because they were being Environmentally Conscious. He knew it was because they didn't have any money.  All his clothes were clean and didn't have any holes.  His mother fixed any holes carefully by hand using tiny stitches in the middle of the night.  The next day she would tell him that the brownies did it. At seven years of age,  he knew better, but he played along because it made his mother happy, and because he like to Believe in Magic.

He got his own breakfast of Oaty-O's cereal and defended the bowl from the many assaults on it by Tomo.  Guessing that Tomo wanted his breakfast, Demitri pondered the cat food situation.  The cat food was up in the highest cupboard to keep Tomo from helping himself.  Demitri knew that he should climb on the counters, but His Best Friend In The Whole World was starving.  This called for drastic action.  He dragged a kitchen chair over to the counter.  The little crocheted socks on the chairs kept them from making any noise.  He stood up on the counter and easily grabbed the bag of cat food.  He decided that Tomo looked Really Hungry and have him a full bowl rather than the puny scoopful he normally got.

Demitri's mother emerged from her room and immediately went to her office.  Demitri know better than to disturb her there.  It was where she did Important Things. Demitri decided that he should go amuse himself.

Demitri had a great imagination.  Today, he and Tomo were hunting House Hippos.  They did not exist just like the brownies.  But Demitri put peanut butter footprints on the counter and ran to show his mother.  She was excited and praised Tomo for keeping the House Hippos at bay.  She packed them a lunch so the could go exploring and not bother her anymore.

Demitri struggled into his snow suit.  Tomo had already headed to the door.  They left the apartment and started heading to the stairs.

Tomo stopped at Number 8 and started sniffing under the door.  Demitri knew that someone had moved in there last night, but he didn't know what the looked like.  Maybe they were scary monster people.

He grabbed Tomo and headed over to Number 10.  Laura was his friend too.  Tomo already had his nose to the bottom of the door.  Demitri scrunched down and tried to see under too.  He knew Laura had a cat, but he had never seen it.  Laura said that it was scared of everything.  How could you be scared of everything?  Scared of Food?  Scared of the Floor?  It didn't make sense to Demitri, so he wanted to see for himself.  It was impossible to be scared of everything.

Demitri was still kneeling down when a large shadow fell over him.